Catherine Howard Read Online Free
benefactor for promotion at court or in the shires. Appointments, such as the groom of the royal bedchamber, maid of honour to the queen, justice of the peace, or even commissioner of the sewers, held endless financial and social attraction even though they often involved onerous duties.
The measure of political success was the control of patronage, and a sign of the third Duke of Norfolk’s political strength and influence was his ability to negotiate a loan from the royal treasury for his brother, Lord Edmund Howard. It was essential to the duke’s control of his family and his status at court that Lord Edmund, along with other Howard dependants and relatives, should be placed on the commissions of the peace and of the sewers for Surrey ; that Brians and Westons, Leghs and Howards, Holdens and Knyvets, all members of the duke’s dynasty, should be listed in the Treasury Reports of 1539- 41 as having received money for services rendered to the government; and that Catherine Howard’s brothers should have been granted licence to import Gascon wine and Toulouse wood. 19
Political empires, built upon the management of local and court patronage, tended in the sixteenth century to merge into family dynasties, since marriage and politics consisted of doing the best for oneself and one’s family. Though blood relationships did not always conceal or mitigate personal rivalry and ambitions, they did at least tend to act as a form of political and party cement. The Howards are often accused of blatant family building and dynastic ambition, but one might as well condemn the peacock for insatiable vanity as criticize the dukes of Norfolk for family aggrandizement, for both characteristics are inherent in the species. Family alliances were tantamount to political existence, and the Imperial Ambassador recognized this fact when he suggested to his master that one way of influencing the Duke of Norfolk was to help him in his plans to marry his son to Henry VIII’s daughter, the Princess Mary. 20 In this search for wives and husbands as the foundation for their political empires, the Howards were particularly successful, and they rival the House of Habsburg for the motto: ‘ Bella gerant alii: tu, felix Austria , nube – Let others make war: thou, happy Austria , marry!’ The Howards were blessed with the most important asset of a dynastic aspirant – a sufficient number of daughters who could be utilized to fulfil the matrimonial designs of the family. Generally speaking, a Howard lady ‘who strikes the fire of full fourteen’ was considered as being ‘ripe for a husband’. The choice of the groom was solely a matter of family welfare and political expediency.
Even in eclipse the Howards showed a remarkable propensity for allying themselves with the most vigorous and successful of the parvenus. With unerring eye they selected the rising and often the most unscrupulous elements of the landed gentry as suitable husbands for their legion of daughters. One of Catherine Howard’s half-sisters married Sir Edward Baynton, who lived to be vice-chamberlain to four of Henry’s queens – not an inconsiderable record to escape unscathed four times from the matrimonial convulsions of that unpredictable monarch. 21 Included in the family web was Sir Francis Brian, whom even the ‘devil’s disciple’’ himself, Thomas Cromwell, referred to as the ‘vicar of Hell’. Sir Francis was one of Henry’s closest friends and was peculiarly successful in maintaining that friendship in the face of bitter political rivalry and the ‘adulterous’ activities of his two Howard cousins. He died in 1550 in Ireland under circumstances that even in the sixteenth century seemed to warrant an autopsy. The doctors could discover nothing, and sagely concluded that the knight had died of grief – a most uncharacteristic explanation which satisfied no one. 22
Numbered among the Howard satellites were Sir Edmund Knyvet, the King’s sergeant porter,
The measure of political success was the control of patronage, and a sign of the third Duke of Norfolk’s political strength and influence was his ability to negotiate a loan from the royal treasury for his brother, Lord Edmund Howard. It was essential to the duke’s control of his family and his status at court that Lord Edmund, along with other Howard dependants and relatives, should be placed on the commissions of the peace and of the sewers for Surrey ; that Brians and Westons, Leghs and Howards, Holdens and Knyvets, all members of the duke’s dynasty, should be listed in the Treasury Reports of 1539- 41 as having received money for services rendered to the government; and that Catherine Howard’s brothers should have been granted licence to import Gascon wine and Toulouse wood. 19
Political empires, built upon the management of local and court patronage, tended in the sixteenth century to merge into family dynasties, since marriage and politics consisted of doing the best for oneself and one’s family. Though blood relationships did not always conceal or mitigate personal rivalry and ambitions, they did at least tend to act as a form of political and party cement. The Howards are often accused of blatant family building and dynastic ambition, but one might as well condemn the peacock for insatiable vanity as criticize the dukes of Norfolk for family aggrandizement, for both characteristics are inherent in the species. Family alliances were tantamount to political existence, and the Imperial Ambassador recognized this fact when he suggested to his master that one way of influencing the Duke of Norfolk was to help him in his plans to marry his son to Henry VIII’s daughter, the Princess Mary. 20 In this search for wives and husbands as the foundation for their political empires, the Howards were particularly successful, and they rival the House of Habsburg for the motto: ‘ Bella gerant alii: tu, felix Austria , nube – Let others make war: thou, happy Austria , marry!’ The Howards were blessed with the most important asset of a dynastic aspirant – a sufficient number of daughters who could be utilized to fulfil the matrimonial designs of the family. Generally speaking, a Howard lady ‘who strikes the fire of full fourteen’ was considered as being ‘ripe for a husband’. The choice of the groom was solely a matter of family welfare and political expediency.
Even in eclipse the Howards showed a remarkable propensity for allying themselves with the most vigorous and successful of the parvenus. With unerring eye they selected the rising and often the most unscrupulous elements of the landed gentry as suitable husbands for their legion of daughters. One of Catherine Howard’s half-sisters married Sir Edward Baynton, who lived to be vice-chamberlain to four of Henry’s queens – not an inconsiderable record to escape unscathed four times from the matrimonial convulsions of that unpredictable monarch. 21 Included in the family web was Sir Francis Brian, whom even the ‘devil’s disciple’’ himself, Thomas Cromwell, referred to as the ‘vicar of Hell’. Sir Francis was one of Henry’s closest friends and was peculiarly successful in maintaining that friendship in the face of bitter political rivalry and the ‘adulterous’ activities of his two Howard cousins. He died in 1550 in Ireland under circumstances that even in the sixteenth century seemed to warrant an autopsy. The doctors could discover nothing, and sagely concluded that the knight had died of grief – a most uncharacteristic explanation which satisfied no one. 22
Numbered among the Howard satellites were Sir Edmund Knyvet, the King’s sergeant porter,
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